VANCOUVER — Residents across central and southern British Columbia are bracing for another storm in a region already waterlogged by flooding, washouts and mudslides.

A special weather statement from Environment Canada covers a large part of the southern Interior and warns heavy rain and thunderstorms are expected to arrive late Thursday and could hang over the area for much of Friday.

The Central Okanagan Emergency Operations Centre is advising residents around Kelowna that the rain, coupled with spring snow melt, could cause area rivers to burst their banks again.

Flooding forced hundreds from their homes last weekend and the regional district placed nearly 600 more homes near Lake Country, north of Kelowna, on evacuation alert on Wednesday night.

Alerts and evacuation orders remain in effect in other parts of the regional district as residents around Kelowna, Merritt, Cache Creek and many parts of the Shuswap are also dealing with flooding and washouts.

Scaled back searches continue for Cache Creek fire chief Clayton Cassidy, who vanished last week while checking high water levels, and for 75-year-old Roy Sharp, who hasn’t been seen since a mudslide hit his house near Tappen, north of Vernon, on Saturday.